2010-11-28

Food Memories

We stumble from Thanksgiving right on to Advent! I celebrated Thanksgiving as usual in Germany, a day late. Not having the day off rather cramps your style getting the foods ready, but it worked well this year. Friends did the bird and used the 15 minutes that it needs to wait before carving to drive over, I did all the fixings. I did pumpkin and apple pie, as well as the cranberry relish the night before, clover-leaf rolls, cornbread, yams, Aunt Jean's mashed potatoes, succotash, stuffed celery, and salad Friday afternoon.

The taste, as always, is tremendous, and brings back so many childhood memories. Although - they are not actually all happy. How often was I bored at Thanksgiving, thought all this tada about the food was silly. I didn't like the pompous things Uncle Jim's brother said. My cousins insisted on watching football on TV, I usually brought a book along so I had something to do until I could finally go home.

I see my father celebrating the turkey - engineered to perfection. I found his adherence to his mother's recipe silly, yet what do I do now, 40 years later? I keep to the recipe, exactly! And it tastes sooooo good! Our guests enjoy it, although they are not sure exactly what to think of cranberries and yams. WiseKid  refuses to sit at the table, but raids the cornbread and rolls, returning a few minutes later for some turkey and stuffing "just for his girlfriend". Fine, if they want to eat in their room, let them. We are just being boring adults and talking about politics.

Nothing went to waste in the Thanksgivings past, the next days were filled with turkey leftover this and turkey leftover that. The one I barely tolerated as a teenager was the turkey noodle soup, as I liked the noodles, but hated the bits of dark meat that were swimming in the soup. So what did I make last night? Turkey noodle soup. With the dark meat. And it was delicious! WiseKid declined, his girlfriend was polite and had a bowl, but was wary of the cornbread. I think I had three bowls, the scales groaned this morning.

I wonder if WiseKid will be insisting on a turkey at Thanksgiving in 40 years?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fine, if they want to eat in their room, let them.


fine?

WiseWoman said...

Digging for the phone yesterday (cursèd mobile handsets) I had to go up the ladder to his hidey-hole. There were plates with Thanksgiving meal left-overs, a squirty-thing of mayo (!), cigarette butts, papers and garbage and MY MARSHMELLOWS! There was also a stepped-on pizza crust on the floor.

No. More. Food. Outside. The. Kitchen.

andre said...

i remember myself 10 years ago, or even less when i was bored by sitting at the table, eating the same stuff year by year. today, having a daugther, family's importance growed to me dramatically so thet i could sit there, talk, eat, drink until i have drive back to berlin.

"kommt zeit, kommt wissen (wertschätzung)": a german idiom, but a little bit changed :)